Chennai: Covid pandemic has put a halt on every aspect of our daily lives but not medical emergencies. When parents of three less than 1-year old babies, weighed between 3.5 to 5.5 kgs from Nellore, Bangalore and Delhi, were told that only liver transplantation could save their children amidst pandemic, they were ready to defy the odds to save their little ones.
With travel restrictions and logistic difficulties, they made it to Chennai to Dr Rela institute and Medical Centre for liver transplantation.
Biliary atresia is a condition which affects 1 in 10,000 children, where the bile ducts that drain bile from the liver to the intestine is not properly formed.
Dr Naresh Shanmugam, children liver specialist at Dr Rela Institute said, “all these three children were diagnosed with biliary atresia with progressive jaundice and liver failure, these childrenās condition started to deteriorate, and parents did not have any option to wait. All these three children were less than a year old and less than 6 kg and there was a greater need to implement strict infection control policies on the staff and parents to make sure both the children and donors to be safe”.
Dr Mohamed Rela, chairman and managing director of Dr Rela Institute, said. “Itās a challenging task to do liver transplant in small babies with biliary atresia as they would have associated abnormal blood vessels which requires reconstruction. For reconstruction of this tiny blood vessels we use venous graft from cadavers. Due to Covid, cadaveric organ donation was practically nil and so we have to improvise and perform the surgery without the need for venous graft.”